On Feb. 12, 1964, my father was a music critic for the New York World-Telegram and Sun, a position he had held for 36 years.

He knew music, loved music, wrote books about music. But the music he covered was classical, which, back then, almost went without saying; the rock critic as we know it had not yet been invented. So when the Beatles landed in midtown Manhattan for two shows at Carnegie Hall, there was no question who would cover them. My dad.

A couple things to note in the review below: First, it refers to a "Save Carnegie Hall" campaign that kept the venue from being razed for an office tower a few years earlier. And its classical allusions are typical Lou, a linguist who studied ancient Greek and later translated "The Divine Comedy."

I was an infant at the time, but over the years he often referred to that night in February with a mix of bafflement and satisfaction. While my mother claimed credit for the "cricket" quip, my father always recited the opening line with pride. He was confused by the Beatles, amused by his lede.

— Amy Biancolli

By Louis Biancolli

World-Telegram Music Critic

Four characters in search of a barber blew into Carnegie Hall last night and just about blew it apart.

On the stage trodden by such lesser worthies as Toscanini, Paderewski, Hoffmann, Heifetz and Rubinstein, the four Beatles strummed their guitars and brought screams from three thousand frenzied teenagers.

Take all the ovations I have heard in Carnegie Hall in nearly half a century of concert-going, put them all together, and they would sound like one shy raindrop compared to last night's Niagara. I caught the 7 o'clock show.

How I got into the act I'll never know. Maybe somebody heard I was an etymologist and confused it with the word entomologist. Maybe I'm a music cricket. Probably because it was Carnegie Hall.

Certainly in all its history the venerable edifice never took such a beating nor did I. It evidently could have been worse considering that several hundred policemen and detectives were assigned to the hall last night.

It made me feel a little sad to be told that three girls attending a youth concert on Tuesday tried to hide themselves in a family circle bar for an overnight wait. Nobody ever did that for Toscanini. Or for me.

Who and what are the Beatles? From what I could see through the four thickets, they are four nice young Britons who manage a powerful beat on electrically magnified guitars and drums.

As for their voices, who could tell in that pandemonium if they had any? So little came through of word or note in that ceaseless shrieking that they might have been mouthing mutely.

They are a British Elvis Presley multiplied, with less body vibrato, but with a combined sense of rhythm that persists like a dynamo. The effect is like mass hypnosis, followed by mass nightmare.

I never heard anything like what went on around me. I've read about bacchantes and corybantes in wild Greek rites screaming insensately. They were antique squares compared to these teenage maenads.

For a solid hour they waited tensely while a Florida quintet — the Briarwood Singers — gave them good solid folk fare. They tried out their screams on one or two disk jockeys who dragged out the stalling.

Pent up and frantic, they finally set up a cry: "We want the Beatles! We want the Beatles!" and out bounded the furry four to a devastating din. The rest of the evening was one long yell.

Was I shocked? That's no word for it. I was terrified. I felt like a drowning man in that sea of shrieks or like Dante in Hell. I never thought I'd hear anything like it till I got there.

As for the Beatles being in that sanctum sanctorum of music which I helped save, I was ready to scream "Quick, Henry, the flit!" That was one buggy ride I could have been spared.